


Force of Nature

by mythbusterposey



Series: Oblivion [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Mental Health Issues, Star-crossed, Truces
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-13 07:24:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5699956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythbusterposey/pseuds/mythbusterposey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>{Act I}</p><p>No matter how much pain they cause each other, something keeps pulling them back to one another. Maybe they choose not to explore why, only the ways in which they're brought together. And maybe they both look forward to falling into step again.</p><p>Shameless Angst on a theme of slow burn Reylo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. pull me to the ground and i won't put up a fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey is tired of fighting and running and being alone. Yet that's what she's best at.
> 
> Or, How Senses Fail And Sensors Fail And Sense Fails To Save Heroes.
> 
> Chapter titles from Force of Nature by Bea Miller

It’s flattering when people constantly praise Rey for being so strong, so tough, able to put up with everything that’s thrown at her. She wishes she could go back to her nomadic scavenger life on Jakku, so she doesn’t have to deal with people coming up to her to compliment her steadfast self. She smiles and forces her gratitude. She had honestly imagined company to be so different. She doesn’t feel like a person anymore. There’s a very distinct feeling that people are calling her brave and thanking her for ‘all she’s done’ just to make themselves feel better. She wishes they could see how blank her face is when she’s in her own company. She used to smile just on her own doing things she enjoyed, looking for treasure out of junk, imagining the universe and all it could have possibly held.

 

She’s seen the universe now, at least some of it. And she is caught so deeply in her disenchantment that she doesn’t see the top of the pit she’s fallen into. Yes, she’s still amazed at how wet things can even be. She remembers jumping into one of the lakes on D’Qar, and had panicked a little at the fear of drowning, but soon found that she could swim just as well as Poe could. It got her a fair share of weird looks from those around her. They’d obviously expected her to fail. The same fake smile had been forced to the surface, then.

 

It’s an absolutely horrible situation to be in, caught between being thanked for doing well at something she couldn’t understand and being scorned for doing well at all for the things she did.

 

She isn’t good at some things, though, and she takes a strange pride in not being so naturally good at things (as Luke tells her, is just a Force user thing). She isn’t good at most social cues, for one. Considering most of her company wasn’t even humanoid, it’s understandable, and quirky for the first week or so, but then becomes a hindrance once people realize she can’t take a joke. Or make one. She’s really bad at jokes altogether. She isn’t good at hugs, either. She recognizes it’s an affectionate gesture, and the Resistance is really just one big family, so hugs are almost as common as salutes on the base. She’s terrible at drinking, which Leia says is a trait her brother shares as well. Rey stumbles back to her room and almost forgets that she has to close the door. She’s so used to living completely alone, with no modern amenities. She feels disabled sometimes, not getting references to certain things, forgetting simple things like names and events she has to attend. She doesn’t have a concept of timekeeping, and is never punctual like everybody around her seems to be. She can’t confide in Finn about this last thing, because he’d been raised around something much stricter.

 

Finn is having the time of his life. After the initial wariness from most of the base at having an ex-stormtrooper among their ranks, everyone was amiable with him. Poe wouldn’t let him be alone for more than a few hours at a time, determined to make a tailgunner out of him. He had mentioned to her that life at the Resistance base was infinitely more relaxed than on Starkiller Base. He still makes sure to be the most professional he can be, which earns him respect among his new peers.

 

She hates that his eyes start to look at her with pity as time goes on. She doesn’t show up for important all-call events, she doesn’t often listen when superior officers are speaking. It gets her put on extra duty more often than not, which just confuses her and stresses her out. She didn’t ask for any of this. She misses the Finn that asked her to run away with him, to the edges of the known galaxy. She misses so many things, like her freedom and her imagination and she misses feeling happy or sad or angry. She can’t even make herself frustrated anymore.

 

She wonders what she could do to elicit an emotion from her tired body. Even the Force connection she has feels dull and stale.

 

The days are filled with pretending, and the nights are filled with panicked dreams. Luke hasn’t spoken with her in weeks. Finn has made too many excuses to escape being around her that she just doesn’t ask. BB-8 is actually doing their job, and only sometimes spares an acknowledging beep her direction in passing.

 

She thought she knew the meaning of lonely on Jakku, but she was mistaken. She was only familiar with being alone. Here on this crowded base, filled with people who look like her and speak the same language as her, she learns the meaning of being lonely.

 

***

 

She wakes from another nightmare-- _ falling, falling, a body is falling _ \--and knows she has to leave the base. She pulls her boots on and creeps out of her room. Being out of her room after lights-out will certainly earn her extra duty, but she only feels a little guilty for Force-persuading the barracks watch into letting her through without any trouble. With the hood of her coat pulled up to shield her from knowing eyes and the frigid fall winds of D’Qar, she slips into the trees and walks and walks and walks through the forest, hoping to find a reprieve.

 

_ Maybe, _ she thinks,  _ if I get lost, I won’t have to go back and deal with the consequences. _

 

It’s a foolish thought and she knows it. She knows the pains of consequences better than most of the people on this planet. Sure, getting extra duty is one thing for not doing your job right, but what do they know of being hungry because they didn’t do their job well enough? What do they know of having to sacrifice sleep for safety, when the desert wolves are prowling through the sand?  _ Maybe, _ she adds bitterly,  _ I should give myself some credit for all I’ve gone through _ .

 

She is strong, to have lived this long and made it this far. She still believes she’s a nameless nobody, purposeless and burdened with a gift she never asked for. “I NEVER ASKED FOR ANY OF THIS!” she screams into the night. Some birds flutter away from the highest boughs of the trees. She’s not in control of her own body as she ignites her lightsaber and slashes through the forest, felling the trees around her with ease. There’s next to no resistance against her blade as she screeches and screams, her anxiety pouring into her movements.

 

She doesn’t know how long her scorched-earth rampage goes on for, but stops when she feels a presence nearby. She raises her saber. “Who’s there?!” she demands, barely out of breath. The presence doesn’t move, and she considers the clearing she had made. Her eyes are wild in the glow of the blue light in her hands. She forces herself to concentrate, and focus on her surroundings. She doesn’t feel threatened in any way by the presence. But it feels familiar. Panic rises in her chest and she thrusts out a hand, the Force flowing through her with no resistance. There’s an intake of breath, and the presence is gone.

 

She is frozen in place for a moment before sheathing the saber and sprinting back to base.

 

***

 

Her extra duty hours are getting up there to be legendary. Leia wonders if she’s trying to beat some record. Caught out of bed after hours, off base after hours? What’s going through that girl’s head? She knows it’s not meant to scare Rey, but it does when she summons her to the General’s Quarters. The girl is stock-still when she buzzes herself into the waiting room. “Come in, Rey.” Leia sighs when she greets her.

 

“Is there something you need to talk about, Rey?” she asks once she’s managed to convince the poor girl to sit.

 

Rey is taken aback by the sudden shift in how she thought this was going to go. She thought she was going to be yelled at, scolded, the like. She’s convinced that’s how this will still go, so she starts off a rambling, “General, I apologize for my behavior since being welcomed onto your base, I know I’m not as punctual or perfect as everybody else is, and--”

 

Leia raises a hand to stop her. “Rey, I’m not here to berate you on extra duty. It’s been brought to my attention, and yes, the number is quite alarming for how short you’ve been staying with us, but I’m here to ask you something else.” She takes pity on the shell-shocked padawan before her and continues. “How have you been recently? I know this must all come as a shock to you, after leaving Jakku so forcefully.”

 

There’s a long, tense moment and Leia wonders if perhaps she’s overstepped her bounds with Rey, but the girl speaks.

 

“I…I hate being told I’m so strong all the time.” she says, speaking with a confused expression on her face. “I feel like an outsider in a place I should feel like I belong in.” she winces. “I miss my friends. I miss Han.” Leia’s heart pierces in agony for a moment, an echo of the unforgettable pain she’d felt not a few months before. Rey goes on. “I can’t make myself feel...anything.” she shakes her head. “I don’t think I should be here.” she says suddenly, looking rather like a trapped animal. Leia can feel Rey’s anxiety building rapidly through the Force.

 

“Rey…”

 

“I have to go.” Rey bolts out of the chair, and opens the door before her with a swipe of her hand. The Force is crackling in the air as the young girl dashes away.

 

Leia is reminded of her son, and is terrified to not know the reason why.

 

***

 

The  _ Millennium Falcon  _ is parked at the end of the flightline. Rey had taken to sleeping there as of late, damn the extra duty, so her things were already packed. Chewie was doing repairs on something inside, and her emotions nearly bubble over for a moment as she lies. “Leia needs you.” she blurts out to the Wookie. He doesn’t ask questions, only runs down the gangway off the ship. Once he’s out of sight she starts to panic aloud, her breath coming in deep and fast gasps, eyes burning, chest aching, hands shaking, pressure building in her head, feet going numb and cold. She slams the repair hatch shut with the Force and ignites her lightsaber. She needs to let out this...whatever it is, inside of her. With a scream, she tosses the saber away, sheathing it. It rolls under a console somewhere. The lights flicker rapidly around her as she stumbles around the ship, closing the hatch door and entering the cockpit, preparing the pre-flight checklists. Once the shields are up she rises up into the air. She initiates the jump to lightspeed while still in the atmosphere, which severely damages the nearest five X-wing ships.

 

She has no idea what her coordinates are. She disables the tracking on the ship, cloaking herself to every inbound signal retriever, a convenient addition made by a young Han Solo. Her hands work on their own, her mouth still unable to do more than hyperventilate and moan with anxiety.

 

She pulls herself out of hyperspace once her mind is clearer. The downside to disabling the trackers is that she has no idea where she is in the universe. She sits back in the pilot’s seat and watches her hands shake until they don’t. She feels sick, and can’t make herself feel bad when she leans over the side of the chair and loses her lunch to the deck.

 

“Sorry, Han…” she mutters to herself, trying to stop her full-body tremors that have replaced the shakes in her hand. She feels cold, and realizes that the trackers also turned off the central heating. She’s deep in space somewhere, and doesn’t see a nearby star. She wonders where the nearest system is, because that’s all she can do, really. She flips on the autopilot and stumbles her way back to the common area. Maybe there’s some rag she can clean her sick up with.

 

After she’s done with that, she finds herself restless, but without energy. The days where she couldn’t bear to make herself leave the foot of the AT-AT she called home felt familiar. She went hungry because she knew she’d be hungry at the end of the day, regardless. She’d just curled up at the threshold of the opening, one hand playing idly with the coarse sand.

 

She curls up in the bunk area she’d claimed as hers, and sleeps, under a blanket too thin to combat the chill of deep space.

 

***

 

The blare of four alarms at once wake her. She feels weaker than when she had gone to sleep, and has to crawl to the cockpit to see what’s going on. Her teeth are chattering and her vision is so blurry that she can hardly decipher the readouts on the console. She manages to get the meaning, though:

 

They’re going to be boarded.


	2. i don't care if i survive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A strange non-truce among non-enemies.
> 
> Or, Of All The Unexplained Things In The Universe, The Most Interesting Are Within Your Head.
> 
> Chapter titles from Force of Nature by Bea Miller

Rey can’t move herself fast enough, acting on instinct alone. The shields had failed sometime in the night--so that’s what Chewie had been working on! She can see her breath in front of her face as she makes her way to the gunners’ ladder. She only has to go up a little ways’ before she can sneak herself into the little smugglers’ hole. There’s no use trying to fight anybody in this state. She has a million thoughts racing through her head at once.

 

(Honestly it’s the clearest her mind has been since the wheels of war have slowed.)

 

The ship jolts and jars as it’s roughly attached to some foreign docking port. This ship is almost a century old, and most modern ports aren’t compatible with her. She probably could have thrown up some physical defenses for the old girl, but it’s taking all she has to just throw up her Force defenses around herself and her presence. It’s one of the first things Luke had taught her, not how to use the Force, but how to hide within it.

 

Finally the blast door to the gangway slides up, and she holds her breath, desperate to glean whatever she can from what she hears.

 

There’s a single set of boots, heavy and metal on the false flooring, that stomp up the ramp. They stop at the top. Rey feels a drop of sweat chill instantly against her skin. The gust of recycled air that comes in with the intruder is hot and heavy. She is drawn to it, but has to fight her body’s urges. What’s she going to do? She didn’t have a plan if she was captured. Could she fight her way out of this one? Her legs are going numb from sitting against this panel. How long could she stay this way before she was found out?

 

“Your thoughts are loud.” a modulated voice says in the cabin below her. “Come out.”

 

Her breathing ceases almost instantly. Kylo Ren has boarded her ship, and he does not sound happy to be here.

 

Her mind is screaming just to run, but there’s nowhere to run, not on this freighter. There’s nowhere to go with the  _ Falcon _ , either. If the First Order could find her this quickly in dead space, she’s doomed. It’s not like her friends would come for her again. Rescue her from the  _ Finalizer _ .

 

There’s a tinny, garbled sigh and a click and a hiss and a rasp. The voice that carries to her is more human-sounding. “Come down from there. It gets uncomfortably cold, but you’ve seemed to have done a fine job at freezing the rest of the ship just fine.”

 

“How do I know you won’t k-kill me as soon as I c-come down?” she manages to get out. She can’t stop her shivers  _ and _ control the Force.

 

“You don’t. But I’m telling you I won’t try to harm you as long as we’re on this ship. I just want to talk.”

 

_ Talk? _ She can hardly believe what she’s hearing.

 

Ren is surprised, or seems to be, when Rey clambers down the ladder, nearly slipping to her death in the gunners’ ball below. She catches herself at the last possible moment. This would have been a useless boarding had she fallen. He regains his composure, helmet at his side. He takes her in for the first time since they both met in battle on the icy, fiery landscape of Starkiller Base.

 

Her lips are blue tinged, a stark contrast from her pale pink nose and icy white skin. Her hair hangs weakly around her shoulders, not back in its usual style. Her frame is slouched over with fatigue and weakness. A part of him wants to rear his head in victory at seeing her so defeated, but he cannot do so without knowing why. She looks half-dead from afar. When he looks in her eyes, he sees that she’s quite much more than half-dead on the inside.

 

“Why is it so cold in here?” he asks, a sneer in his voice. She’s confused, which is why she answers.

 

“I cloaked the ship from all trackers.” she replies. She doesn’t know why her chest warms at the look of amusement in his eyes. “It keeps thermal detection from operating at this shipboard temperature.”

 

“Interesting.” he says, bemusedly. She’s still shaking.

 

“How did you find me?” she asks with a frown.

 

“That is something to be discussed somewhere warmer.” he says, motioning to his own ship, connected to hers through some crazy First Order contraption. Some of her sense seems to return.

 

“Unless you’re extending your promise into your own vessel, I’m afraid I can’t.” she says, scowling at him.

 

“Say I am. You’re still freezing on the spot.” They face off like that, just glaring at one another, for what seems like an eternity, before she sighs and relents. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Where’s the steadfast young woman that had bested him months before? It was almost distressing to see her so compliant and...devoid is the first word that comes to Ren’s mind, and it settles hard and unforgiving in the pit of his stomach.

 

She looks around Kylo Ren’s ship. It’s one of the First Order’s cruisers, outfitted with enough modifications to be a class of its own. “Did you make these mods?” she asks, toying with a hyperdrive fuel injector. This ship must go  _ fast _ .

 

“I did.” the cool voice comes. She looks resigned as her eyes shift around. There’s no lightsaber on his belt, nor is there one in this first common area of his ship. Off to the left is the control console, with three chairs for a commander, navigator, and first mate. A quick probe with the Force confirms that they’re the only ones present. Kylo Ren watches her with the intensity of a bird of prey. His robes rasp quietly against the shiny black floor of his ship. “General Hux disapproves of me owning my own cruiser, but…” he turns to face her. “He disapproves of me in general.”

 

She finally gets to look at him. No doubt due to an incredible amount of time in a bacta tank, and the First Order’s efficiency bleeding into their medical ward, the only trace of the facial scar she’d left on him back on Starkiller Base had calmed into an angry red scar, even months later. She knows he must hate her for marring his face, but part of her can’t bring herself to care at this point. The scar will fade and whiten over time, she knows from the ones she sports on her own body from practicing with the lightsaber unsupervised. He has new robes, different from the fantastically terrifying ones he’d sported in their last encounter. These ones seem to be a little more forgiving, much less severe. They’re still tight around his body (and presumably a layer of armor) and draping around his legs. They’re still black. But he doesn’t seem to be walking with a lightsaber up his...well. He seems more relaxed. If Kylo Ren could ever be relaxed. There is no belt round his waist to keep his lightsaber on. She remembers slashing it through his hand toward the end of their battle.

 

Rey briefly thinks about her own lightsaber back on the  _ Falcon _ , but expels that thought from her head as soon as she can. She takes a seat in the captain’s chair. The view of the stars seems to be a little cleaner here than in the  _ Falcon’s _ command center. However, it just makes the entire space seem darker. “You’re in my seat.” comes the pompous commentary. She rolls her eyes, which shows how much more comfortable she is in the heat than in the cold.

 

“I’m your guest.” she says, mirthlessly. He catches that she’s referencing their introduction on Starkiller Base. He’s none too pleased about that.

 

“I’ve finished my training.” he mentions haughtily.

 

“I see we’ve moved on to small talk.” she answers sarcastically. “I’m no good at that.” she warns. “And I’m in no mood to be bored to death out here.”

 

“Good, neither am I.” he says, unexpected attitude in his voice. Obviously he likes to talk. She doesn’t. This should be interesting.

 

“So go ahead and tell me how you found me. You obviously want to gloat.”

 

“If I wanted to subject you to needless gloating, I’d take you to General Hux.” he says. There’s a beat. “I have to ask you first, though: how did you end up right in the same place I dropped out of hyperspace?”

 

The silence stretches out uncomfortably between question and answer.

 

“Whenever I had cleared my head enough to concentrate.” she replies. He nods, contemplative.

 

“So it was random, seemingly.” he resolves, unhelpfully. She doesn’t like that answer, her anxiety-fueled paranoia leading her to believe he’s holding something back from her. How do two of the last Force users in the known galaxy end up at the same precise place in deep space within hours of one another? “What made you steal the freighter?” he asks. She could roll her eyes again. He knows this ship,  _ her _ ship, and knows she has a name.

 

“Let’s say I’m a fugitive.” she says. “Resistance life isn’t really working out for me.”

 

“And Jedi life?”

 

“The same. What about you? Just gallivanting around the Outer Rim?”

 

“Gallivanting?” he says, an amused expression crossing his features. Poe Dameron had taught her the word. The man was spectacularly well-read. “Let’s say I’m a fugitive.” he mirrors her. “The First Order is a little too...fascist for my tastes.”

 

“Says the war criminal.” his expression darkens. “It’s like you’ve never been held responsible for anything you’ve done in your life.” she bites.

 

“I’ll let you have that.” he relents, decidedly lenient with her, as she has been with him. “But no, I’m also not tracking anything. Maybe this is the place the coordinates send you once you have no place to go. There was a theory about random hyperspace travel General Hux had bored me with once.” She imagines his heavy helmet lulling to the side, trapped in unwanted conversation.

 

However, it seems like a valid reason. “Maybe.” she replies. “What broke the deal for you?”

 

“Pride.” he gives a bitter smile. She understands. The man is vanity on legs. Reverence embodied (for some crazy idea of a dead dictator). His pride is what makes his blood move. “You?”

 

“Wasn’t what I thought it’d be.” she admits. “You were right, though.” she says.

 

“As much as I love to hear it, pray tell why.” She almost doesn’t answer, to spite his horrid attitude. She’s reminded unwillingly of Han Solo, and his snarkiness mirroring the man who was once his son.

 

“My lonelin--no, it comes from before that.” she settles and swivels the unforgiving chair in thought for a moment before continuing. “I couldn’t adjust as well as a Jedi should have. I’m not the most punctual or efficient. I just wanted to eat, sleep, and work on the  _ Falcon _ with Chewie all day.” The mention of the Wookie makes Kylo Ren sneer his upper lip a moment, but she ignores it. “I’ve been alienated.” she concludes. “And I couldn’t take it anymore.”

 

“How long has that been going on?” he asks.

 

“Since I got back from…Luke.” she treads carefully. Lightsaber or no, this man can be dangerous with his emotions. Luckily he shows some restraint and doesn’t lash out. There’s still a flare of something she’s too tired to decipher.

 

“That’s been a long time?”

 

“A few months.”

 

It’s quiet again.

 

“And they punish me, you know?” she laughs. He almost has the decency to look horrified. “Nothing serious. I don’t care, really. It gets me out of that small room with all the rest. The General was showing some concern just prior to me leaving. Just prior.”

 

“I’m sure she...meant well.” the sentiment is almost clawed out of him. He’s lowering his defenses around her. It’s strange. They both feel it.

 

She doesn’t keep track of how long they talk like that, quiet and deep, but when she finds herself falling asleep in his captain’s chair, she can only leave a request of him to not leave without her on her ship and him on his.

 

Sleep comes to her and embraces her better than it had since she’s left Jakku.

 

***

 

Kylo Ren watches over the sleeping padawan in the captain’s chair. His ship is not warm by any means, but compared to the Hoth-like temperatures of the  _ Millennium Falcon _ , she must think it’s a paradise.

 

He’s still reeling, slightly, from the events of the day. He suspects the Force may have brought them together in the universe, as it had once already. The girl is special. He doesn’t know if her existence means his success or his demise, and Supreme Leader Snoke doesn’t seem to be keen on telling him anything. He wants the girl, at his citadel, that much is certain. Does he mean to train her as he’d graced the Knights of Ren with his training? A dull flare of envy flares across his mind, worry and paranoia igniting his fears that one day, he would not be powerful enough to lead the Knights.

 

He’d already run away from the First Order. His modified ship was faster than anything in the entire fleet. If there was one thing his father had taught him that hadn’t been flushed out, it was how to push any engine to its limits. He doesn’t dwell in sentiment enough to name his craft, like the other fool had. He couldn’t fly back and expect no consequences. What with his failure to best two amateurs in a saber battle, he was being held in a constricting position of scrutiny. He commanded no squadron, not officially. Until recently, he commanded the fear of everybody on board any ship at any given time.

 

He had yet to decide if he was running from Snoke as well. Running from Snoke would mean running from the rest of the Seven, and he was intimate enough with their abilities and skills to know that in the event of a six-on-one, his chances of survival were non-existent.

 

Rey stirs in her sleep.  _ What about the girl? _ A part of his mind asks, the tendril of Light within him shivering in agreement. The girl would be an asset, if she was trained and utilized correctly. He hates the way he thinks so clinically. It’s a tactic, he knows, to keep his mind on a low broadcast and less susceptible for intrusion. This was something he’d come up with on his own, after observing the minds of General Hux and Captain Phasma. The girl’s thoughts were much more erratic than his were, which he’d observed in their first few meetings.

 

Now...Now her thoughts were decidedly more sluggish, assumably from the exhaustion and the cold, but a bit of probing into her thoughts showed him more.

 

Skimming across the surface of her mind, he reaches in with his fingertips. He’s almost rocked with a wave of loneliness, as he’d been hit with the first time, and fords past it. Her mind is like a wide river, still at the surface, but torrential beneath the waters’ edge. Anxiety, sharp and black, claws its way into his view, present in all things around her. Paranoia hides behind it like a scared child, spilling worry into her happiness. Depression manifests like a weight that pulls him down, down, down, deeper into her mind. If he can stand it, he will continue.

 

He sees into her dream, broadcast into his mind like a holochron.

 

_ She’s running, her legs pumping as hard as they can, but she’s going nowhere fast. She’s heading for the forests’ end, escaping from somewhere deep and dark in the middle. Her breath is hot in her mouth, but the moment it passes her lips, it’s frigid. Her hands and knees feel like ice, and if she could spare a glance, she would see they’re covered in blood and torn skin. _

 

_ The forest is dark, and thick, and confusing. Her path is unsure and winding, and the darkness seems to grow the faster she tries to get away. There’s a snap of a twig behind her as she runs, fear prickling the back of her neck like the crackle of electricity in the air before lightning strikes. _

 

_ The air is hot now, and she is cold. There’s a voice calling to her through the trees, two voices, more and more. Calling to her to pull her out of the forest, to pull her back into the trees, to live among them for all eternity. Her body is so fatigued but she continues. _

 

_ She doesn’t know how long she’s running for, but she’s growing colder and colder as time goes on. The Force snaps out like a whip, to get her pursuer away. How long has she been running? Yards? Miles? The forest just looks the same to her, the dark shadows growing familiar even as she passes them without much more than a glance. _

 

_ Icy talons wrap around her throat next, and she slows to a stop. _

 

Kylo Ren pulls out of her dream abruptly, breathing hard and shivering, a phantom chill slithering up his spine. She’s still asleep, ghost of a concerned expression on her soft features. What has been happening to this girl to be dreaming such dreams?


	3. i know i'll be broken when it's over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey's 'cave of discovery' is decidedly less of a denouement than that of her master's.
> 
> Or, An Interlude From Sadness Does Not Mean You Are Free From Depression.
> 
> Chapter titles from Force of Nature by Bea Miller

They don’t speak much when she wakes, other than to part ways. They exchange their holocom broadcast IDs with one another, to their own surprise. HBIDs are ancient tech, used by relic collectors most of the time. They’re not often surveilled or tracked, which is a benefit for the two of them. They don’t really ask why the other has a holocom in the first place. Rey expresses that she wants to keep the cloaking devices up for a while longer on the  _ Falcon _ , so Kylo Ren gives her one of the heavy First Order-issued winter coats he’d had on board. “You’re lucky I didn’t jettison this in my departure.” he says.

 

“I suppose I am. Thank you.” she replies, holding the coat in two arms.

 

The Force crackles around them, powerful and warm. They don’t mention it as they depart.

 

She decides to go in one direction on the Outer Rim, and he in a different one. They make no promise to keep in touch, but they both have the others’ HBID pinned to the dash of the comms console.

 

Rey finds a warm but humid planet with a killer magnetic field to settle in. The  _ Falcon _ almost doesn’t make it through the heavy atmosphere. The first few days on the planet consist of her crawling around the deck, unused to this intense pull of gravity against her. Over a few days, she gathers enough strength to walk around and make repairs and improvements on the ship. She manages to freeze the  _ Falcon _ again, and is cursing in all the languages she knows as she repairs the thermal shield. She tries not to think about how nice the coat smells.

 

Practicing with the Force is exceptionally beneficial on this planet. It takes all her concentration to raise boulders and trees and make a fire. The wildlife was particularly predatory, given the tropical climate. There was an abundance of scaled, six-legged creatures living in the tall, lush trees. She learns quickly that the ones with spots are for eating, the blue ones are friendly, and the black ones with silver stripes spat fire.

 

The entire planet was thrumming with indescribable energy. She loved walking around in the forest with her staff and her lightsaber, hacking through trees and drinking water from untouched streams. She remembers seeing some strange kind of mountain in the southern hemisphere of the planet, so she takes the  _ Falcon _ there one day, after the propulsion boosters had been calibrated to the planet’s gravity field. Flying the ship was much more difficult without a co-pilot, and she missed Chewie with a pang in her heart as she leaned over the seat to her right to initiate the landing sequence. It was shaky, due to the fluctuations in atmospheric pull, but she made it to the base of the gray mountain in time. The energy she’d been feeling so strongly before seemed to intensify as she stepped foot on the planet once more. A few of the scaled creatures followed her as she carved a path up the mountain’s face.

 

After a few hard hours of hiking upwards, and a nearly-caused rockslide saved only by her efforts to practice using the Force on rocks, she finds herself at the mouth of a very large, very dark cave. The scaled creatures seem to disperse as she looks into it. A strange peace threatens to overwhelm her.

 

The silence is broken when her holocom chirps cleanly through the air by her hip. She jumps nearly a foot into the air, even in the stronger gravity. When her shaking hands fumble for the ovular device, she recognizes the incoming broadcast signal. She presses the activation button and a cloaked figure shows on the crackly hologram. “Kylo Ren.” she breathes.

 

“What are you doing?” he demands to know. The message comes in brokenly, most likely due to the interferences from the magnetic field.

 

“What are you talking about?” she asks, walking away from the mouth of the cave to look out at the landscape. The sun beats down on her brow.

 

“I could feel your presence in the Force until just a moment ago, what are you doing? Where are you?”

 

“I don’t know the name of the planet with all of the trackers off, but it’s somewhere about 40 parsecs off from where we last were.” she estimates. “What do you mean? How can you feel my presence in the Force?”

 

She watches closely as he clenches and unclenches his fist at his side. “It’s nothing. When you’re in your ship, flash your shields off for an hour, then turn them off. I’ll come to you.”

 

“What?! Why?” she demands, looking back at the cave again.

 

“Just do it!” he shouts, and ends the holocall.

 

She stares at the round device in her hand in disbelief for a moment. “Just do it!” she mocks in a high voice, pulling her expression into something snide and childish. She holsters the holocom device again and shakes her head. She’s not leaving this mountain unexplored.

 

***

 

Kylo Ren paces back and forth in his ship, somewhere in the Arkanis sector. Hutt Space was just on the border of this sector, which meant the First Order should have no reason to be anywhere near here. His hair has grown out just a little bit longer than he normally keeps it, and he’s wondering if he can manage it even longer, or perhaps shorter.

 

He knows he has to ditch the Order’s shuttle at some point. No ship is truly untrackable. The  _ Millennium Falcon _ is perhaps the closest to winning that title, but due to her current captain, and her beacon of the Force pulsing into the universe, Kylo Ren can still trace her. She’s somewhere on the edge of the New Territories, maybe in the Obtrexta Sector. He’d know where she was if he could spare a moment to concentrate on her. But he can’t do that. He’s still in the business of saving his own skin, currently. He’s been keeping to the most hidden landscapes he can, ditching his First Order and Knights of Ren attachments. The ship will be hard to give up. He resolves to a plan: he’ll strip the thing of parts before posing as a smuggler, pawning off a First Order ship and some “information” to the nearest Resistance-friendly vendor. Most of the clientele on the edges of Hutt space were neutral or Republic-leaning, so he’d have to choose his words and actions wisely. He could make repairs and modifications to whatever ship he manages to trade for in some other sector. Maybe he could go find Rey.

 

The thought niggles in his mind. She was invading his thoughts frequently, lately, and he couldn’t summon a reason that wasn’t insultingly stupid. He begins work on stripping the Order shuttle of everything he’s ever done to it, trying not to double over in reaction to her phantom abandonment in the Force.

 

***

 

The first few steps into the cave are made with her breath held nervously in her chest. Her heart continues to pound against her ribs, making her hands shake. She has the distinct feeling she’s somewhere very, very old and very, very sacred. She steps lightly (as lightly as she can) as she makes her way down. She ignites her saber in her hands when it gets too dark to see where she’s going.

 

The cave seems to go on and on forever, turning so gradually it comes as a surprise when the darkness threatens to swallow her whole. She adjusts her grip on the saber and gasps when the cave becomes a cavern, opening up wide and  _ huge _ .

 

She deactivates her saber once she sees the faint light spilling in from the top. Nothing has been in this place for ages, nothing living, at least. Yet, there’s still a very strong presence here. A presence of the Force, so she’s come to realize. The glowing light she’d assumed was from outside was not actually from the sun. Upon closer inspection of her surroundings, she realizes she is looking at a cavern full of jewels.

 

They glow all on their own, and seem to surge as she nears a cluster by her feet. Her mouth hangs open in amazement. Force crystals? She remembers Luke saying something about kyber crystals, and how rare they were in this day. Her scavengers’ hands itch to grab, collect. Rey has to remind herself that this place is sacred and treasured. There’s obvious markings of previous inhabitants of this place, from the scattered markings along the walls and floor of the cavern. A mining site. If this lush forest planet was in fact a kyber crystal quarry, why was there no bustling life around?

 

_ “Around the time I was born, Darth Vader was seduced under the control of the Emperor.” Luke says. They’re atop one of the islands’ jagged cliffs. “From what I can gather through the teachings of my masters, the Emperor enacted a protocol called Order 66. It involved the killing of everyone in the Jedi Order.” Luke paused, unsure of where to continue. “And since the Jedi Order was an integral part in the ongoing Clone Wars, it was suspected that every Jedi, be it padawan, knight, or master, was wiped out in its wake.” he takes a breath. “A few managed to escape with their lives, but have not been heard from since. I sought out the Jedi temples of the known universe. The Empire, and the First Order, have made it one of their missions to attempt to destroy all of these resources, to prevent the Jedi from growing strong as they once were. _

 

_ “After countless days, months exploring every sector I could, I stumbled across Ahch-To. The place we sit now is the first Jedi temple I can find in recorded existence.” he says. She feels this realization wash over her the same way the Force does whenever she learns something new she knows she has to remember. “There were bones, here.” he says softly. “There were Jedi here, who had fled their home worlds to come to this desolate water planet. But I was much too late to ever have met them.” his smile is sad and bitter. “But as you can feel, too, the Force is much stronger here.” She nods to her master. “It is in everything. But in the places where Jedi have dwelt, have been born, have died, those specific places in the universe are sacred, and you can feel that deep within you, in the place where the Force lives in you.” _

 

“Is this a Jedi Temple?” she whispers aloud, the vastness of the dark cavern too big to grace her with an echo. Her head spins round, looking for a clue that will lend her the answer. The Force crystals glow a little brighter as she flexes out with her abilities. They respond hungrily to her strong foothold in the Force, and brighten the cavern clear as day. She laughs in delight, observing her surroundings.

 

On the cavern walls, she can make out etchings, some ancient script she recognizes as the strange mathematical language of the Muun. But why would the Muun be here, in a cave of treasures left untouched? They are a highly successful race, and would have picked this mountain of every last crystal.

 

She looks around, expecting evidence of a battle, bones around the cavern, like Luke had found on Ahch-To, but there is nothing. It seems like the inhabitants here have left without a trace.

 

She pores over the various collections of crystals, somehow organized by hue and shade naturally. She’s drawn to the blue ones, of course. She ignites her saber and has to jump back quickly before the others in the cluster below also decide to ignite, shooting hot, powerful plasma every which way. She dodges the blast by mere chance, and sheathes her saber. “Maybe not blue.” she breathes.

 

She pores over the various crystals, and thinks of how Kylo Ren doesn’t have a saber. Maybe...maybe she could get him one from here and he could rebuild.

 

What color would he use, though?

 

She knows he would stick up his very large nose most likely, and declare he wanted crimson. Or black. She nearly laughs out loud at the image of him in her head, petulant. Maybe she should get him green, to spite him. “No…” she smiles to herself, content in her own company, as she had been for all the long years of her life.

 

Her exploration of the cavern goes on and on. She didn’t believe that lightsabers could come in any other colors than blue, green, and red. She’s now seeing rich violets, delicate milky white crystals, hardy-looking orange gems, and mystifying yellows. Her feet drag her deeper into the cave, which she forgets momentarily is  _ inside of a mountain _ . She suddenly stops, when her feet kick over something round, that tries to roll away. It’s a lightsaber! She picks it up with her hand and ignites it, gasping when not one, but two bright beams of orange power spill out of the shaft in her hands. She’s seen Kylo Ren’s cross-guarded saber twice, but never imagined a lightsaber could do  _ this _ . She sheaths it and gently places it into her bag. She doesn’t find where the saber had even rolled from. She wonders if she could outfit her quarterstaff with saber beams. She’d do so much better with that instead of with the blade she has now. Maybe she can tinker a little bit with it. A few steps later she runs into another lightsaber, this one with a blue blade like hers, just a little longer, in fact. These sheaths are all similar, but unique in their own ways. She gasps when she sees where the sabers had come from.

 

Piled high before here was what could only be described as a throne. A throne made of lightsabers. Hundreds - no, thousands of sabers were piled high atop one another, making a stack taller than she was. Taller than Kylo Ren, even. Rey uses the Force to grab one at random. She’s got no clue what this all was. There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but didn’t know enough to figure out. True to form, she grabs a few more of the sabers before retreating back out of the cave, and the tunnel.

 

She needed to call Kylo Ren.


	4. i can see you coming and i stand here waiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo Ren sees his present, Rey sees his past. They see the cave.
> 
> Or, Smugglers And Legends Tend To Dress The Same.
> 
> Chapter titles from Force of Nature by Bea Miller

The signal flash does its job well. Just after she turns off the shields and turns on the trackers again, her holocom chirps. There’s only a message readout, though.

 

_ I’ll be there soon. _

 

Rey doesn’t know where the breathless thrill in her chest comes from, but she expects that it comes from his words. Her mind brings her thoughts somewhere strange. In her short time with the Resistance, she’s seen people come together and talk about love, and longing, and being together. Though she never saw Han and Leia together, she knew from how Leia and Luke speak of him that they loved him very much. Luke had likened their love to a stubborn blossom in the harshest climate, blooming defiantly over years and years.

 

She shakes her head to clear her thoughts; ‘love’ was not a word to be used in the same sentence with Kylo Ren. Even she knew that. She also figures that she should have at least a few hours more to herself before she should expect a visitor, so she allows her thoughts to travel a little.

 

Fear was no longer her go-to emotion towards the dark Jedi. Weariness, yes, but she’s always been weary of other people. She’d never let anybody in enough to justify letting her guard down. But that night on his shuttle had shocked her, somehow. How could she let her guard down to a person who had done such wrong in the galaxy? A fanatic of some forgotten Empire? She’d spoken so deeply with him that night. And though there were many nights between then and now, she still remembered the words they’d shared. It was a relief to let out in words what was troubling her most. And he’d divulged a little to her, in turn. Why was she so comfortable around him? Was it the unspoken truce between them, that they would put their expected battling aside just to feel like humans again? She truly felt a connection with him, though. And that connection made her feel...warmth. Breathless. Thrilled.

 

She toys with the sabers she’d retrieved from the cavern.  _ Maybe I can give him one, and he can show me a few things to do with my own. He obviously hand-made his own saber, and didn’t have another one.  _ She wonders if the uncontrolled fury of the lightsaber she’d destroyed was in any way affecting him. The crystals in the cavern had all had an incredibly powerful effect on her; she’d left the cave stumbling and power-drained.

 

Sure enough, a few hours later, she looks up at the sky and sees an unfamiliar ship struggling to make a landing near her. Kylo Ren must not be used to the gravity field the same way she is. The ship he’s on is a mid-size cruiser, almost a quarter the size of the  _ Falcon _ , with blue stripes along the sides of its warm gray body. She can tell he’s outfitted it a little, just by how it’s handling with more ease than she’d expected. The landing gear comes up and the planet shakes as it touches down. She emerges from the  _ Falcon _ with her saber drawn, just in case this is an ambush.

 

Her holocom chirps at her. “Why didn’t you warn me about the gravity field? I almost lost the ship!” an angry voice demands.

 

“What happened to the other ship?” she replies, stepping toward the loading plank as it descends.

 

“I had to ditch it, it was too high-profile. And besides…” the voice on her holocom echoes the actual voice of the man descending the plank. “This one’s faster.”

 

His hair is longer. That’s the first thing she notices about him. It brushes against his broad shoulders now, in wild raven waves. The humidity of the planet isn’t doing much to help in that regard, either. His scar almost bisects his face, grisly enough to discourage staring. There’s a new scar going along his left cheekbone, fresh. It’s thin and about the length of her finger, stretching back towards his ear, most likely a glance from whipping machinery. He’s also ditched all of his black robes, replaced with a banged-up, deep red jacket, most likely leather. It must be stifling in this heat. The shirt beneath is a weathered white, with a deep opening in front. His pants are a deeper green that tuck into brown boots that end just below his knees. On his hip is a blaster holster, at the level of his right hand.

 

“You look like a smuggler.” she says with an amused smirk.

 

“You look wild.” he shoots back. A brief touch against his mind with the Force shows her what she looks like to him. Her hair is up in one bun, tied tightly against her head as to keep it off her sweat-slick neck and face. She has dirt all over her skin, from climbing down the mountain earlier that day. There’s a few rips in her tunic and her armwraps have seen better days. The cuts on her knees are a testament to how hard she’s been pushing herself while on this planet. Her saber is at her hip, the first he’s seen of it since being on Starkiller Base.

 

“I suppose we’re both right.” she says. “Why did you come?” she asks.

 

“I told you. I lost track of your presence in the Force, and came to investigate.” he sighs. “Is this where you were when I called you?” he looks around.

 

“No.” she replies, turning her body and pointing to where she’d entered the cave on the mountain. “I was up there, I found a cave. If you hadn’t called I would have.” This makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. What was up there that was so important that she would call him about?

 

“What did you find?” he asks, voice dropping softer.

 

“Let’s go to my ship and talk.” she says. “The second sun is about to rise, and I don’t want to be around for that temp spike.” he acquiesces and they climb into the  _ Millennium Falcon _ . Taking a seat in the common area, she spreads out the five lightsabers she had taken back with her from the cavern. His eyes go exceptionally wide.

 

“Where did you get these?” he asks. His tone has some strange recognition in it.

 

“They were in the cave. Why? What are they?”

 

“These lightsabers are over fifty years old. They’re from before the time of Darth Vader.” he murmurs. “These were used before the fall of the Jedi Order. Your lightsaber was probably from this generation.” he points to one on the table. “This one was a Jedi master’s, as was this one.” he points them out, babbling on about them.

 

“How do you know so much about this?”

 

He looks up, as if he’d forgotten she was there. “I need you to take me to this cave.” he says.

 

***

 

She insists they don’t leave until the first sun has set fully. Rey is looking forward to getting off the frigid  _ Falcon _ , which had been more than eager to go back to freezing itself once the signal flash was over with. Dealing with an antsy and secretive Kylo Ren made her jumpy. She’d hit him with a fat “ _ no _ ” the moment he’d suggested igniting one of the sabers on her ship. He’d chosen the oldest of the lot for himself. The unspoken gratitude he feels speaks volumes. The saber attaches nondescriptly on his other hip, in the spare holster meant for another blaster. She wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t known it was there. She nods in approval. “So you’ve dressed the part of the smuggler, but how deep does the act go?” she asks.

 

“Are you asking me if I’ve smuggled anything across the galaxy?” he says, quirking an eyebrow upwards. If she’d known him for longer, from a different time, she’d say he looked just like his father. “The answer is complicated. Technically I’m a fugitive. So just about anything I do at this point is illegal in some sense.”

 

“I can understand that. Where have you been since I last saw you?”

 

“Arkanis sector. Not quite Hutt Space but close enough to trust the First Order isn’t following.” He’s kicked his feet up on some console, and she’s worried he’ll break something, but reminds herself he probably knows this old freighter better than most. “Almost had a few close calls, which lead me to get the cruiser and ditch the First Order transport. Spent a few days hopping systems, stealing parts and making repairs where I could, upgrading the hyperdrive I’d scrapped from the transport.” he looks a little sheepish at that admission. “I knew I wouldn’t survive without it.” Whether he means that in a “I’m Kylo Ren and I like to go really really fast” kind of way or in a “the First Order will catch me” kind of way is left on the table. They start talking about repairs. Rey gives a detailed explanation of the things she’s had to do to modify the  _ Falcon _ ’s internals and externals so she could withstand the gravity field.

 

They both move the huge floor grate that’s covering the central engine so she can point out the major weaknesses she’s strengthened. “I’ve had to make do with the decades-old parts and equipment I have on hand, but I haven’t been flying much so it’s not really made any difference. I don’t have a credit to my name, so I can’t get anything new to upgrade her with.” she laments. “If I could get my hands on one vehicle to strip apart for other uses, it’d be a podracer.” she says.

 

Kylo Ren nods, agreeing. If there’s one thing they could talk for hours about, it’s ships and flying. He had to give up his favorite hobby for his Jedi training, and further on his Knights of Ren training, so a bit of his facts are outdated. Considering the most modern thing she worked on was probably older than the both of them, his lacking knowledge doesn’t concern him much.

 

The alert beeps that the sun has set and the temperature is back down to bearably muggy. She shucks her layers and laces up her boots. Kylo Ren takes off the jacket he has with him. She catches sight of the angry scar on his shoulder when his white shirt pulls to the side. She’s left so many scars on him. She looks away quickly.

 

After an hour of hiking up the mountain, with his frustrated sighs following in her wake, she rolls her eyes and offers him a rubber band so he can tie his hair back. He doesn’t thank her, again, but his gratitude is becoming familiar to her now. His frustration is lessened now, and they can climb easier now.

 

The topic of conversation remains on ships and flying. She has no knowledge of politics, or the regular weather of this planet, and knows that talking about the Force would only lead to some kind of nasty spat between the two of them.

 

“We’re almost there. Another few hundred feet.” she announces. Kylo Ren braces his shoulders, like he’s going to go face some superior or enemy. “There was nobody in there when I went in.” she says, hoping to quell his own anxiety.

 

They arrive at the mouth of the cave. The quiet seems to swallow them whole, the incredible dark stretching before their faces, far and close. “Let’s go in.” she says. When the light from outside finally disappears, she announces that she’s igniting her saber for light. The cavern is now encased in the powerful blue light of the Skywalker Lightsaber. Kylo Ren’s eyes flash with greed and envy just for a moment before looking away. He pulls out the one in his holster and ignites it alongside her.

 

A thrumming purple blade almost hits the ground with how he’s angled it. They stare at the plasma beam for a long while. “It’s purple.” she remarks.

 

“It’s not.” he replies. “It’s two crystals in one; fused together. A blue and a red. These crystals are extremely rare.”

 

“That’s impossible.” she remarks, stepping closer to him. “How can it be crafted like that? Two crystals, it’d be impossible to control more than one at once, that’s too much power.”

 

“So it seems.” he shakes his head. “There’s a lot of mythology around these sabers, but I don’t want to talk about it right now.” her head is brimming with questions, what does he mean, mythology?

 

She leads him on through the tunnels, the air cooling and settling around them. There’s no sound but that of their sabers and their feet. Her chest surges with that same leaping curiosity when they enter the cavern again. She watches Kylo Ren’s face as she disengages her lightsaber. The room is cast in the ethereal glow of the Force crystals, as well as the bright purple shine from the saber in his right hand. “I recommend not turning that on in here.” she says. “These crystals are power-hungry.”

 

“Crystals?” he murmurs, looking at her for the first time. He disengages. “Show me.”

 

She leads him around the cavern in silence, and this whole thing feels like a dream. She points out the Muun writing on the wall and is disappointed when he doesn’t know what it says either. He’s more concerned with where she got all the lightsabers from. She takes him there, and he gasps at the massive pile of sabers. Actually gasps. “What is it?”

 

“This place is a tomb.”


	5. i lay arson upon my lover's skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Within the cave, history stands on the precipice of repetition.
> 
> Or, Interlude
> 
> Title from my poem, http://bit.ly/1S0rPUh

They both carefully move the sabers off of the pile, into neat little rows. He gives some backhanded compliment on how quickly she has learned to wield the Force. “I have the greatest _teacher_ in the galaxy.” she says defiantly, never one to pass up an opportunity to jab at him. He glowers but isn’t hostile. They reveal a massive coffin beneath all of the sabers. “Who’s in it?” she asks, disrupting the tense silence they were both holding their breath for.

 

“A Jedi master.” he replies. How does he seem to know all these things? “Masters have a very specific presence about them.” he explains.

 

She focuses and concentrates on the presences in the room, closing her eyes. There’s herself, young and bright, beside Kylo Ren, a wise but tortured presence. And before them, she doesn’t know why she didn’t notice it before, there’s an even older, wiser, and more powerful presence within the box, most likely subdued with the sabers about them. Her mind takes her to Luke and his own presence. She feels the same thing she’d felt there. She’s in the presence of greatness.

 

“Wow.” she whispers reverently.

 

“Jedi are traditionally buried with their lightsabers.” he continues. “However, when the Empire rose to power in the wake of Order 66,” he looks over to check if she knows what he’s talking about. He goes on with a nod from her. “Many Jedi were left unburied, most of them, in fact.” he turns his saber over in his hands. “Also traditionally, Jedi made their own lightsabers. It signified the completion of their training. They would be brought to a temple like this one, and select one crystal that would stay with them forever. Even to death. It was horrendously taboo for a Jedi not to die with their lightsaber.” he shakes his head. “Or so the story goes.”

 

“You know a lot about Jedi tradition and heritage.” she comments, dusting off the top of the stone coffin.

 

“Your training is limited. It’s not just about learning what you’ll do, who you’ll be, where your loyalties will lie in any given situation. It’s about respecting your past, your masters.” a bitter look crosses his bold features. “Else we’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes history has made.” he roughly pushes a large pile of lightsabers away.

 

They’re quiet as they rest, pondering if or how they should open the coffin, or on other things. Rey leans against a nearby wall, while Ren sits cross-legged out in the open. “Do you think… no, it’s stupid.” she starts and stops, shaking her head.

 

“No, please, go on.” he waves a hand in her direction.

 

“Do you think that so many lightsabers are here because they couldn’t be buried with their masters that had been slaughtered?” she says aloud. The atmosphere in the cave seems to shift with her statement. “I mean, the Force works in strange ways, and if the crystals in these sabers had come from this mountain, maybe the tomb had called them all home.” she hypothesizes. “So they could be buried here with a Jedi master, and not left all alone in the universe.”

 

“That….is a _very_ interesting hypothesis.” her companion finally says.

 

***

 

They decide to leave the tomb be and explore the rest of the cavern. “How did you build your lightsaber?” she asks.

 

“It wasn’t so much a lightsaber as it was a time bomb.” he bites out humorlessly. “Jedi knights and masters train their padawans how to do it properly, using the Force and constructing their sabers from parts they’d crafted, once again, through the Force.” he sighs. “Those old quarries were almost completely destroyed by the First Order, in an effort to stymie the rebirth of the Jedi. Snoke wouldn’t listen when I told him it was unnecessary, that Skywalker wouldn’t have come out of hiding for anybody, even his sister. The destroy order was passed, and I was dealt with for insubordination.” he rolls his eyes, defiant to the end, and surprisingly aloof about what she’s positive is torture he’s talking about. “To answer your question, my lightsaber was never quite built. It would explode at times.” he says. “If you threw it and hit something, there was a good chance it would blow up.” he shrugs.

 

“Well I won’t be asking you about that, then.” she mutters.

 

“Luke Skywalker can convene with the dead.” he mentions. “It’s how he learned to become the master he is. When his first master Obi-Wan Kenobi died at the hands of Darth Vader, he had barely picked up a lightsaber. When his second master Yoda died by the hands of time, the young Jedi was still untrained, practically waving a lightsaber about to suit his needs with efficiency. In the wake of Darth Vader’s death, he was visited by ghosts from his past: Obi-Wan, Yoda, and his father. They, along with the countless spirits trapped in the Force, trained him in solitude until he was naive enough to think he was masterful enough with the Force to train others in it. And it worked, for the most part.” he concludes softly, before picking back up and meeting her eyes. “Luke Skywalker was handed the lightsaber he used for most of his life. He hasn’t trained anyone in the art of sabercraft.” his resentment shows in his hands as they flex long fingers out and back in. With little more than a pause, he removes the gloves covering them.

 

His hands are large and secretly packed with nimble power, but obviously not skilled enough to avoid the danger of building a lightsaber by hand. White scars lash across his knuckles and fingers. Rey looks closer, not touching him. She can see a spot on his thumb that has a chunk burnt out of it, the skin shiny and artificial. He turns his hand and she sees the pink-tinged scar of the wound she’d laid upon his palm when she’d struck his saber from his grip.

 

Her hands move on their own, untucking the woven, frayed ends of her arm wrappings, and unwinding them inch by inch from her arm. Stark white, untouched skin reveals itself to him in the surreal glow of the cave, and he gasps when he sees the first scar stretched from the center of her forearm around to behind her elbow. It is an old scar, puckered and angry and gray from no sun exposure. The many lines of grit and dirt that had stolen away between her wrappings give the illusion of stitches. This mark doesn’t come from any lightsaber, or from any skirmish, or even from an accident. _Anger_ , he thinks. _This was borne from anger and loneliness._ He thinks it strange that loneliness is the core intent of everything she does. His eyes flicker up to hers, and they dare him to pity her. He does no such thing.

 

Instead, he repeats her action, tugging his dirty white shirt over his head, dropping it wordlessly to the side. The Force is strong between them, and the crystals glow brighter, shrouding them in equal light and shadow. His body is strong, but it also was weak, once. Across his chest are a chart of freckles, but intersected with angry nebulae of scar tissue. _There’s mine,_ an insurgent possessive voice rises in Rey’s mind at the sight of the web-like burn above his heart. _He has no heart,_ her thoughts snarl. Her hungry eyes rake lower on his chiseled torso, to the puckered skin beneath his ribcage. The clean circumference of a bowcaster bolt is ringed by explosive flame-like fingers in every direction. These are fresh and most likely still tender. The others are old, as hers are, and her eyes land on the matching one to hers he has upon his arm. He is more scar tissue than skin, more pain in his past than relief, his suffering borne from ignorance rather than the unknown, as hers is. She knows these wounds are all no more than a few years old, marking the skin of a man no longer allowed to be Ben Solo.

 

The Force trembles as she comes to this realization. He closes his eyes, shuddering and looking away in shame. He scars himself to remind himself that he is not only unworthy of redemption, but he is entirely incapable of it.

 

Her hand shoots out and rests upon his chest, above his heart, which picks up in pace under her touch. His eyes meet hers again, his breath hot and laced tightly with barely concealed desire. The Force flows between them not as a fragile chain as it was before, but now as a rip current, pulling them so severely close to one another’s minds they burn with it. He feels every scar she’s endured, every drop of blood spilled from her skin, and she feels his repentance. She gasps with the intensity of it, and he lays his hand to the angry loneliness manifested on her arm. Pain finds equilibrium between them, ecstasy in his mind, and torture in hers. She buckles and collapses against him, hands everywhere at once. Her hunger for _feeling_ is consuming her, and her touch licks like flames across his skin, skipping sensations as her nails rake against his scars.

 

And when their lips meet, his soul finds rapture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be upping the rating next chapter. x


	6. i'll be here till we collide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo Ren has always known the future, but Rey was never ready to love a martyr
> 
> Or, The First Collision.
> 
> Chapter titles from Force of Nature by Bea Miller

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning, smut and angst ahead~

They move together, her smaller body atop his, and the air crackles around them. Her palms are becoming incredibly sweaty and she hides this fact by pushing at her clothes to get them off her body, now too hot for the fire in her blood. She makes him lean back onto the cool, dusty stone with her palms on his chest and a burst of the Force. The breath is knocked from his lungs at the impact. The wild of the jungles outside the cave gleams in her eyes, a frightening hint of the Dark side within her. Those demons she keeps not tamed, but leashed. Her kiss is fire upon his skin. It’s a wonder how those lips were ever blue.

 

Her touches are incredible, going exactly where they wanted, exactly the places to drive him crazy. His pleasure is direct-connected to hers, and the exchange between them rises with each passing minute. His hands finally react to her, coming round to grab at her thighs, squeezing hard and compelling her to settle down on him. That amazing backside lowers itself down onto his lap. He’s still not permitted to sit up, but he isn’t too concerned. Her weight is perfect against him and his growing erection. He grunts as she grinds her hips down on him, it’s been a  _ very  _ long time since he’s indulged himself in pleasures like this. His mouth tries to keep up with hers, worshipful and reverent. He could die like this. He could die  _ from _ this.

 

It’s very clear that this is going the way  _ she _ wants it to go. Again, he doesn’t mind. She gets her mouth on his collarbone and bites and sucks into his skin. He doesn’t realize the low moans are falling from his own lips, prayers of rapture and mercy. Kylo Ren, master of the Force and the Dark side, is begging mercy from a girl half his size and a third his weight. He almost would have laughed if she wasn’t intent on getting her hand into his pants. He swears and tries to help, but with a glare his hands are pinned to his sides. He finally laughs. She’s rather grumpy when it comes to this.

 

He moans once her hands make contact with his length, arching beneath her. Her small hands on him send a thrill of danger down his spine, crackling like lightning. She observes him, and he watches her. What with their bond so strong as it is now, she finds out just what he likes within moments. ‘Wrapped around her finger’ comes to mind, and he swears she laughs.

 

She knows he feels like he’s on fire, and fine with dying warm. She is greedy for every emotion she can tear out of his psyche, devour it for herself. She’s drunk on just  _ feeling _ , and he’s moaning from the peace within her. He can no longer touch her, which is a shame. He wants to explore her in the same way she’s destroying him.

 

His teeth grind together when she gives a squeeze at the base of his cock, and he is desperate to be inside of her. “Please make up your mind.” he bites out. She doesn’t give a snappy response as he’d thought, but she does let go so she can shove her pants down her slim thighs. The air around them is chilly but between them is pure fire. He holds his breath as she reveals more and more skin to him. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. He swears and helps her free her feet from the fabric. She drops back down on his lap, shivering a little. “Let me.” he begs her.

 

She glares at him for a moment before her face reveals a hint of her nervousness. He pulls her closer to him and pushes his hands up the tops of her thighs, drifting inward. He watches her watch him. It’s absolutely intoxicating. She’s a drug to him. When he finally touches the slick heat of her entrance, they both gasp. His fingers tease at her, thumb circling lazily around her clitoris, a distraction as he finally sinks one digit into her. She takes him greedily, a soft moan penetrating the air. When he knows she needs more, she gets more. His mouth latches onto the side of her neck, and he realizes he’s in control but only with her permission. There’s a whole world out there, a whole universe, probably, looking for the both of them in equal fervor, but he’s in here with her. And they just can’t be bothered.

 

She takes three before she chokes him with the Force warningly. She doesn’t want to get off on his fingers alone. He nods and gasps in a breath as she releases him. She doesn’t even have to hold up a hand to choke him, like he has to. She’s incredible. He takes his fingers away and strokes them, and her slick, over his cock. He can barely tear his eyes away from her as he lines himself up with where his fingers had just been introduced. He nudges his head against that velvety heat and kisses her, biting down on her lower lip as she slides him home withing her.

 

The air seems to stand still between them. If they had the scope to look anywhere but each other, they could see every loose object hovering five meters off the cavern floor. He breathes her in and presses kisses to her red, swollen lips. She finally returns his bite, and rides him in earnest. They both know they won’t be able to last long like this, or last long in general. His hands leave bruising marks on her hips. His heart pounds in his chest as they move together. He has to look up to see her. She looks like an avenging angel. Her hands go to his hair and his chest, finding a hard-paced rhythm instantly.

 

He swears he can feel every nerve in his body ignite when she reaches her peak. They both cry out, her pleasure eclipsing into his own as he spills his seed inside of her. They can hardly stay upright enough for him to slip from her heat before they collapse to the floor. They lay there panting for a long time. She jumps out of her skin when the sabers and loose rocks and crystals come crashing back down. He laughs, a rare sound, by the look of his surprised face.

 

They lay there like that, untouching save for her wrist over his elbow. He swears at some point. She nods in agreement.

 

“What are we going to do?” she asks tiredly. “You can’t be on the run in this galaxy your whole life.” a fleeting image of the two of them in close quarters for the rest of their lives flits across his imagination, and he grinds it into dust with his heel within his mind. He frowns.

 

“You’re right. You’re going to have to go back to the Resistance at some point, and I need to face Snoke and the First Order.” he says with depressed resolve.

 

“You could come back to the Resistance with me, say you’ve denounced the First Order.” He meets her eyes finally, and he wonders if it’s the crystals around them or the sex that’s made her glow as she does, eyes radiating hope as he’d expected from her always. Recently, he hasn’t seen that emotion in her at all. He frowns deeper.

 

“You know my fate will be the same in either outcome.” he murmurs. “It’ll be prolonged if I go with you, because of the beurocracy the Republic prides itself on.” he sighs. “Certainly they’d go for a swifter execution, but they’d bore me with trials and proceedings. The First Order would parade me around to humiliate me and make an example, and Snoke will probably torture me and demean me, and I’ll probably die at the hands of the other six Knights of Ren.” he sounds so resigned, rehearsed.

 

“You’ve thought on this.” she observes. She’s quiet. He is right, of course; he’s a war criminal. She’s said as much to his face before. “What about option three?”

 

“You’re looking at it.” he sits up so he can clean himself up, pull his clothes back on piece by piece. He winces when his skin pulls taut against the marks she’d left on him with her nails and teeth and lips.

 

“You’ll become a smuggler?” she says. He tugs his boots on one by one and shakes pebbles and dirt out of his hair. He hands her her pants, and she pulls them on quietly, shaking a little.

 

“I suppose. As much as I’d hate the life, it’s survival. I was always a coward, now I don’t particularly have a chance to be anything more.”

 

“I can talk to them. I can talk to Leia, she’ll understand, she’ll want you home--”

 

“She’ll be the one to rend my head from my wretched neck!” he snarls. “I’m no longer her son.” he turns away in shame, picking up his satchel. She struggles to catch up with him, winding her wrapping around her arm, proving difficult while near-sprinting.

 

“You have the Light in you…” she says, unsure of what to even call him. “I’ve seen it. I’ve  _ felt _ it in you.” She’s running out of words to plead to him.

 

“It’s weaker. The Force weakens in me every day.” he admits. “It weakens me.” he says. His eyes are cast in shadow as he finally stops. “This will never work with us.” he says, shocking her.

 

“How can you possibly know that?” she says.

 

“You’re still dreaming of a happily-ever-after, Rey. There’s no happy ending for any Force user. There’s nobody in the history of the Force that has died or lived a life free of conflict and unhappiness.”

 

“But they did sometimes have happiness.” she says, ashamed at the heat rising in her face. How could she have given herself to someone who would sooner toss her away than be brave and seek happiness?

 

Kylo Ren seems to pick up on this thought and looks pained. “Don’t pity yourself, Rey.” he says softly. “You’re stronger than that.” The anger she’d leeched off of him ignites within her heart, and she ignites the Skywalker lightsaber in her hand. His eyes widen in shock as he darts out of her reach quickly. Fiery blue beams of light streak across the walls as the Force surges within the cavern. Bursts of heat and power come from the clusters of Force crystals around them. “Rey--!” he exclaims, trying to defend himself without adding to the chaos of plasma beams igniting around the.

 

“You  _ pity _ me?!” she demands. “Come fight me, you blasted coward, and show me your pity!” she roars. He’d seen this intensity twice before from her: once on Starkiller Base, and again when he had projected himself to her on the Resistance base on D’Qar. She’d destroyed a forest both times, and now, he was the only living thing around her.

 

“Rey, put the saber down!” he says, his arm nearly getting singed by the burst of energy nearby. It blooms out like some horrible flower. She’s going to hurt herself if she doesn’t stop. All he gets in return is a screech of fury before he’s knocked right off his feet. He’s beneath her again. Her face is twisted into an expression of pure rage. The Dark side rears its head inside of her. “Rey.” he pleads. “Don’t let it consume you. Please don’t let it take you.” The ground is shaking beneath his back and shoulders. “Rey.” he closes his eyes, feeling death right on the precipice--

 

And then nothing. Silence, save for heavy panting. He opens his eyes to her and his heart breaks at her expression. She looks broken above him, all of the rage in her drained from her fingertips. Her eyes aren’t the dead-looking things he’d seen on the  _ Falcon _ but instead they’re filled with sadness and sorrow. Tears fill her eyes and he surges forward to take her in his arms. She sobs into his chest, the Force a drawn out note of music between them. He presses his face into her hair. “I’m sorry.” he whispers to her. “I’m so sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so so so much for all of these amazing comments, and of course the kudos - they make me grin whenever I see them. This is definitely going to be a series, so don't worry about all that. Will be posting somewhat regularly, depending on my frantic schedule. May the Force be with you x


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